Having set out in
the previous Chapter the wider political context within which Jews and
Arabs confronted each other immediately before World War I, the present
Chapter sets out the roots of the substantive components of that
confrontation.

Section 1 describes the characteristics and motivation of the Jewish migrants, and their lack of capital and skills. Section 2
The Ottoman central and local governmental structure is described and
the attitude of the administrators and local centres of power toward
this Jewish immigration is examined. Section 3
sets out the economic and cultural factors which formed the initial
framework for the conflict over land acquisition and labour-employment.

The
initiation of World War I hostilities in 1914 changed the dynamics of
this confrontation from what was essentially a domestic issue for the
Ottomans to one in which the Great Powers saw for the first time their
interests being affected by Arab-Jewish relations. Nevertheless, while
the basic roots of the domestic conflict still remain, they created
radiations of international concern which cannot be understood if
divorced from their source.

1. The Ashkenazi European Immigrants of the Second Aliyah

a.Characteristics and Ideological Motivation

The
character and ideology of the Second Aliyah (1904-1914) was different
from the two earlier waves of immigrants. The very early Jewish
settlement, known as the “First Yishuv” (covering the
period from the destruction of the second temple in 70 CE until 1881),
was motivated by a desire to return from exile in the Diaspora to
resettle in Eretz Yisrael for purely religious reasons. It was urban in
character and centred mainly in Jerusalem, Tiberias, Sefad and Hebron
(see Chapter IV section 3.c).

The
First Aliyah immigrants of the “New Yishuv”, estimated
between 20-30,000 souls, emigrated from Czarist Russia and
Rumania between 1881-1882 ; they were motivated by their will to escape
from European anti-Semitism and a desire to return to and redevelop the
‘Land’ to its full agricultural potential. But both the
First Yishuv and the First Aliyah were heavily dependent financially on
philanthropic support from abroad. Those from Russia relied upon
donations collected by emissaries (shlihim)
who maintained connections with the towns and villages of their birth,
while those from Rumania depended on the financial investment,
technical and administrative support given by the Rothschilds and other
Jewish philanthropists who established the private farm colonies (moshavot), such as Petach Tikva and Rishon-LeZion (see earlier Chapter V sections 2 and 4).

The
Second Aliyah, composed of some 40,000 Jews, and like their
predecessors, were mostly members of the lower middle class, in the
path of whose progress increasing impediments were being placed. They
included craftsmen, office workers, and graduates of universities and
Talmudical colleges. Their migration was motivated by two major
events:

the formation of the ideologically non-Zionist Jewish
Socialist Bund in 1897. This movement arose in response to a call to
participate in organisations of a social character, and especially to
abandon the traditional European Jewish negative attitude towards
manual labour and to engage in productive occupations; and

the outbreak of two days of mob violence in April 1903
directed against the Jewish community of Kishinev, the capital of the
czarist province of Bessarabia, (today’s Republic of Moldova).
The riot was provoked by rumours spread through the town that a
Christian had been killed by Jews in a ritual murder. When the outbreak
was over 49 Jews were dead, 500 were wounded, 1,300 homes and
businesses were looted and destroyed and 2,000 families were left
homeless. News of the event, flashed around the globe by modern
communications sent waves of shock across Russia and mass protest
rallies were held in Paris, London and New York. Western governments
protested the apparent complicity of the czar’s police, who had
refused repeated pleas to intervene. (http://www.forward.com/articles/8544/kishinev--the-birth-of-a-century/#ixzz1qQYSgQbc)

The pogrom served as the forerunner of many other anti-Semitic attacks
which occurred subsequently throughout the Russian Empire and was the
spur which compelled Herzl (who died in July 1904) and the Zionist
Organisation (ZO) to consider the search for a Jewish homeland even
outside of Eretz Yisrael.
(Y. Khaver, April 1903: The Kishinev Pogromhttp://www.midstreamthf.com/200304/feature.html )

In
character and ideology this Aliyah also differed from that of the
earlier migration, particularly in four spheres, all of which had an
impact on Arab-Jewish relations:(i) socialism (ii) Hebrew replaced
Yiddish as the language of communication and (iii) security and
self-defense and (iv) of great importance, the employment of Arab
labour;

i. Socialism

Many
of the Jews from Eastern Europe who formed part of the Second Aliyah,
especially the youth, were attracted to socialism as it developed in
Western Europe for a variety of reasons. These included the adoption of
“brotherhood and equality among men as a main plank in the
building of a “just society.” Others saw socialism as a
reply to Anti-Semitism and as a way of escaping the smothering
environment of the ghetto.

The
writings of Ber Borochov, a founding member of the World Confederation
of Poalei Tziyon (“Workers of Zion”) in 1907, provided
these immigrants with an ideological framework for Socialist Zionism
derived from classic Marxian theory. According to Borochov, economic
forces alone did not determine history and that each people was subject
to unique national conditions. The Jewish problem, for example was
based on the fact that

"the
Jews, being guests everywhere, were never fully integrated into the
class structure of their society…. The Jewish class structure
formed an "inverted pyramid" with fewer real proletarians and more
professionals, intelligentsia and people engaged in non-essential
consumer production… As economies developed, native populations
produced their own professionals and intelligentsia, and competition
for jobs in all spheres intensified. This generated antisemitism,
because native populations coveted the jobs and positions of Jews, and
it forced Jews to migrate from country to country, in a 'stychic
process'"

Because
they were prevented from owning land and in engaging in normal
pursuits, Borochov argued, Jews tended to congregate in non-essential,
peripheral occupations such as commerce, the professions, consumer
goods manufacturing and finance, all of were considered by classical
Marxists to be non-essential and "nonproductive" as opposed to
agriculture and basic and heavy industry. Borochov believed that Arab
and Jewish proletariat would have similar class interests, and would
develop a common front in the class struggle. As will be demonstrated
in Chapter IX, this ideology did not fit the reality of Palestine
before WW I, where Arabs were competing with Jews for jobs.
Nevertheless his socialist Zionism held out a strong appeal, especially
to the youth who were viewed as individual ‘pioneers’ and
as a collective group known as the ‘Workers Aliyah.’

The
Zionist socialist movement does not appear to have made any great
attempt to bridge the gap between themselves and the Arab fellah.
Indeed there is some evidence to support the claim that First Aliyah
migrants, being more conservative, mature and having also the benefit
of the influence of Baron Rothchild’s organisation to support
them had better relations with the Arab fellah and the Ottoman
authorities. In contrast, the younger inexperienced Socialist
immigrants who did not have such support when confronted with Arab
opposition also had to contend with the fears of the Arab effendis and
urban notables who saw in the Jewish socialist movement a threat to
their own social, political and economic standing in relation to the
fellahin.

In
this Aliyah, the European immigrants, especially the young, wanted to
abandon Yiddish and replace it with Hebrew as the medium of daily
communication. While Hebrew as the language of Jewish identity and used
in religious observance, it was not seen originally as crucial central
to Jewish to nationalism. There was a growing sentiment in the Zionist
movement that had Hebrew had to be adopted if its nationalist
objectives were to be attained.

For
the secular settlers of this Aliyah, Hebrew and Hebraic culture would
become the norm in their newly chosen home whereas, Yiddish was
associated with the impoverished masses left behind in the ghettos and
had to be discarded as being as too “Jewish.” Hebrew
was to be retained but reinvigorated - not the language of the Talmud
which dealt with ‘tribal sectarian’ matters irrelevant to
the contemporary needs of immigrants in their new land.

Significantly,
the language of the host country, Arabic, was not to be adopted as it
would have been were the new immigrants desirous of being absorbed into
the culture of the majority population. Neither was Hebrew accepted
automatically and without heated debate. French was employed as the
language of instruction in the secularly oriented Alliance schools in
Palestine and German was considered more appropriate than Hebrew for
commercial endeavours and scientific development.

For the Zionists, the process of nation-building and the protection of
the Hebrew cultural heritage involved a variety of language policies
such as: standardisation of grammar, public institutional use of the
language, linguistic modernisation and expansion. If Hebrew was to be
adopted and developed not only colloquially, but as the official
language it required to be institutionalised. This had in fact already
occurred in 1880 with the founding in Jerusalem of the ‘Language
Committee’ (vaad halashon) which was reorganised in 1904 with
onset of the Second Aliyah.

Thus
the use of Hebrew became a communication barrier between Jewish
immigrants and the indigenous Arab population except in areas where
there was a direct interaction between them. The significant exception
was in the area of self-defence.

William Safran, Language and Nation-Building in Israel: Hebrew and its Rivals, Nations and nationalism 11(1)2005, 43-63.

The
earlier settlers of the First Aliyah relied upon the protection of the
foreign consulates and upon paid Arab watchmen to protect their
communities, farm settlements and their crops from Bedouin and other
marauders. However, the Socialist Zionists participants in the Second
Aliyah, having experienced pogroms in Russia believed in their own
self-realisation and reliance as being preferable and were determined
that in Eretz­Israel, Jews would be more effective in defending
themselves. Certain members of Poale Zion took it upon themselves to
form a small secret guard society called Bar-Giora, to guarded the
Sejera commune in the Lower Galilee (now Ilaniya) and Mes'ha (now Kfar
Tavor). With advice from Yehoshua Hankin, who was to be very involved
with Arthur Ruppin in Jewish land acquisition, and a loan from Eliahu
Krause, the manager of Sejera, they organised themselves under the name
of Hashomer (the Watchman) in 1909 and acquired their first arms with
the aim of providing an organised defence for all the Jewish
communities in Palestine in return for an annual fee.

The first guards initially worked on foot, but soon acquired horses,
which vastly increased their effectiveness. They gained the respect of
Bedouin marauder not only by learning to communicate in Arabic
and adopting the Bedouin garb but also by assuming the airs and manners
of their well-remembered swash-buckling Russian Cossacks and
acquiring their horse-riding skills. However the Rules of Engagement
defining HaShomer’s freedom of action was quite limited:

"You
do not seek an encounter with the thief; you chase him off, and only
when you have no choice do you shoot. After all, he is out to steal a
bag of grain, not to murder you, so don't murder him, drive him off.
Don't sleep at night. If you hear footsteps, fire into the distance. If
you feel he is a few steps away and you can fire without him falling
upon you, fire into the distance. Only if your life is in danger -
fire."

The
Organisation succeeded in attaining its objectives but in the process
it aroused the ire of Arab watchmen who lost their jobs, frustrated
Bedouin pilferers to the point of anger and antagonised the Arab
population by retaliatory raids to such an extent that some of the
older settlers worried that Hashomer might upset the status-quo with
the local Arab settled population.

Although
HaShomer numbered fewer than 100 men at the organisation's peak, it
became extremely important to Jewish security interests especially
during the British Mandate when, in 1920, it reorganised itself to
become the Haganah. This was much broader-based group, committed to
coping with new defence challenges and needs of the growing Jewish
community in Palestine, ultimately becoming the foundation of the
Israel Defence Forces upon the establishment of the State Israel in
1948.

In
emphasising a return to the land, the Second Aliyah movement advocated
the employment of Jewish agricultural labour to the exclusion of the
Arab fellah, upon whom many of the First Aliyah had relied. This topic
assumes considerable importance in the relations between Jews and Arabs
and will examined in greater depth in the Chapter IX together with the
matter of Jewish land acquisition with which it became inextricably
intertwined.

b. Second Aliya’s Lack of Capital and Skills

Notwithstanding
the pressures placed upon it by the push of Jews desiring to leave
Eastern Europe, the ZO, having learnt from of the experience of the
First Aliyah, publicly attempted to dissuade potential migrants from
coming to Palestine unless they had the financial means and skills to
maintain themselves without institutional or philanthropic
support.

Although
many of the new migrants sought employment – both in the cities
and especially in Jewish agricultural settlements, during the earlier
part of the period under discussion – they encountered
difficulties due to inadequate preparation, training in the
agricultural skills and their disappointment at being unable to realise
their expectations of attaining a higher standard than that of the
fellahin with whom they had compete in the labour market.

Consequently
the ZO began to insist upon potential immigrants receiving preparatory
technical training and social orientation appropriate to their new
lives before their migration and that sufficient land should be first
acquired before the arrival of the migrants.

As
will become clear later, the implementation of these policies created a
tension between the migrant Jewish settlers and the Arab fellahin as
did the Zionists’ introduction of new scientifically based
methods of intensive agriculture derived from veteran German settlers
and new forms of landholding (collective settlement – kibbutz and
the cooperative small-holders’ village- moshav) unknown to both
urban Arab notables and the indigenous fellahin share-croppers.

As
a recognised millet (religious community) within the Ottoman Empire,
Sephardi Jews succeeded in creating and maintaining their own
aristocratic wealth and power structure, which extended to the election
of Jewish members to the Ottoman parliament and the establishment of
educational institutions focused around the religious leadership.

The Jewish newspapers of the time demonstrate a clear
division of interests between the Ashkenazi Zionist immigrants and the
Sephardi Jews holding Ottoman citizenship. The Ashkenazi workers'
papers, ha-Po'el ha-Tza'ir and ha-Ahdut, affiliated to two Zionist
political parties, ha-Po'el ha-Tza'ir and Poaley-Tzion, respectively,
concerned themselves with the ways in which Palestine could be brought
under Jewish control, particularly by securing the Jewish labour market
from Arab competition.

In contrast, the Sephardi newspaper, ha-Herut, published in
Jerusalem concentrated on the relationship between the Jewish
communities on the one hand and the Ottoman authorities and the
emerging Arab Nationalist movement on the other hand. It directed
its efforts towards persuading Arab Muslim public opinion of the Jews'
good intentions in the development of Palestine and showed little
concern for Zionism and Jewish nationalism. Abigail Jacobson, Sephardim, Ashkenazim and the 'Arab Question' in pre-First World War Palestine: A Reading of Three Zionist Newspapers, Middle Eastern Studies, 39: 2, 105 – 130

Sephardi
Jews did, however, become involved with the Zionist Ashkenazis by
acting as middlemen in the acquisition of land. However, apart from
this activity, Sephardi interests and activities did not coincide with
those of the Ashkenazi immigrants until after WW I. Indeed in some
areas, they collided; the Sephardi establishment saw the Zionist
sponsored Ashkenazi immigration as undermining the former's relations
with the Ottomans, particularly where the immigrants retained their
foreign citizenship and rejected that of the Ottoman.

To
the detriment of their relations with the indigenous Arab population,
the new immigrants were somewhat self-absorbed, preoccupied with
overcoming many difficulties - including climate adjustment whilst
ignoring the impact which their activities had on the indigenous Arab
population – especially in the rural areas.

Important
and often overlooked in the Second Aliyah was the contribution made by
a small but significant Yemenite migration to Eretz Yisrael which the
Palestine Office had advocated. Some settled among the earlier urban
immigrants in Jerusalem and Jaffa, but the majority joined the
pre-existing and the new agricultural settlements which were to be
established during this period.

They
not only contributed their previously acquired agricultural skills, but
were accustomed to living at a lower economic level than their
Ashkenazi counterparts. The latter did not view the former as being
ideologically motivated to settle but considered them as indigenous
population capable of replacing Arab labour at lower wages and
accepting standards of living lower than that demanded by the European
immigrants.

Consequently,
in failing to seek out and integrate any Yemenite leadership within the
ZO, the Zionist movement regrettably lost an opportunity to create a
cultural bridge in the rural areas where a cultural confrontation arose
between the Jews and Arab fellahin stemming from the migrants’
land acquisition and utilisation.

2. Ottoman Government Structure and Policy towards Jewish Migration and Land Acquisition

The
economic burden of the national debt on the Ottoman Government, its
impact on taxation, land tenure reform and changes in the Arab social
structure and Jewish migration prior to the 1880’s has already
been briefly discussed in Chapter IV,
Sections 3, 4 and 5. These factors continued to influence both Ottoman
policy and Arab attitudes towards to the Jews of the Second Aliyah.
Nevertheless, it becomes necessary to examine in a little more depth
the structure of Ottoman administration and of its personnel inasmuch
as the conduct of officials both at the imperial and local levels of
government impacted directly on Jewish immigration and land acquisition
and on the relations between Arabs and Jews.

a. Adminstrative Structure

The
dilemma of the Ottoman government in reforming its administration was
how to maintain centralised government control over policy while giving
sufficient latitude and discretion to local officials for efficient and
expeditious implementation. Simultaneously it needed to institute
reform in its methods of tax collection. To achieve this balance, The
Vilayets Law, promulgated in 1864, apparently modelled on the French
Prefet system, reorganised the administrative structure and boundaries
of its Empire.

The largest region was the Province –vialyet -
governed by a vali who was responsible to the Minister of
Interior in Istanbul.

Provinces were subdivided into Districts (sanjak) whose
governors were accountable to the vali. In the case of Jerusalem,
however, by reason of its increasing interest and concern to foreign
governments, its status was raised to that of a Mutesarriflik in 1887,
a status falling between that of a Province and Sanjak and its governor
made directly accountable to Istanbul.

Sanjaqs and the Mutesarriflik were further subdivided into
local communes and villages (qaza and nahiyes) administered by local
sheikhs, to be supplanted later by a muhtar and supported by an
advisory administrative council.

District Administrative Councils (majlis idara) were
elected on the basis of a very narrow suffrage. Each council was to
have a religious (mufti) and a judicial (kadi) figure acting ex officio
together with eight other ‘elected’ officials. The latter
each had to pay an annual direct tax of at least 500 piastres. Since
this was beyond the financial ability of the large majority of the
population, the law merely entrenched those who already exercised power
and excluded those who previously owned or worked the land - especially
the fellahin.

In
Palestine three levels of provincial and local administration operated,
comprising thirteen local qazas/ nahiyes, which fell within the
jurisdiction of either the Sanjaqs of Acre and Nablus which accountable
to vali of Beirut or the Mutasariflik of Jerusalem whose governor was
directly responsible to the Minister of Interior in
Constantinople.

The
valis (governors), being state functionaries appointed by Istanbul,
were usually chosen carefully for their administrative capabilities.
They were granted a wide scope for independent action and a large
measure of responsibility to enable the Ottomans to gain optimum
efficiency in ruling the provinces so as to advance greater
centralisation of power throughout the empire.

The
holders of the top-ranking administrative posts in the sanjaqs
(districts), generally Turks, were all filled by direct appointment
from either Istanbul or the province's vali.

In
order to prevent the governor of a valiyet or sanjak from becoming
identified with local interests, his period of tenure and those of the
senior bureaucrats were generally very short, although there were
exceptions. This made for inconsistent supervision over the
governmental functions performed by the lower administrative
sub-districts comprising urban and rural qaza and nahiyes. As a result,
for the effective or ineffective implementation of central government
policy the higher units of the Ottoman administration had to rely upon
the local knowledge and connections of the personnel appointed, elected
or employed in the lower units of the Ottoman Administration.

In Palestine, these elected urban notables and locally appointed
officials were Arab rather Turkish, a differentiation which would
become significant after World War I when the British Mandatory
Government took power.

b. Ottoman Central Government Policy Towards Zionist Aspirations

From
the 1880’s, Ottoman policy towards Jewish migration had been
fairly settled and continued almost without change even after the Young
Turk Revolution. Immigrants were welcome in the Empire, but not in
Palestine. They could settle elsewhere in small groups provided that
they assumed

(i) Ottoman nationality and relinquished their earlier nationality;

(ii) waived all rights of protection extended by foreign consuls;

(iii) complied with all Ottoman legislation and
obligations towards the Empire, including compulsory military service.

This policy was based on two premises:

(1) the concentration of yet another cohesive
cultural-religious group within a closely confined and settled area would give rise to a
nationalist movement and create a culture of secession similar to that already experienced in the
Balkans and Greece;

(2) an increase in the number of foreigners residing
within the empire to which they owed no allegiance coupled with their
acquisition of land therein, gave increasing power and influence to foreign
consuls. The latter, by virtue of the Capitulations, were able to
extend their legal protection to
their respective nationals and exercise political influence on both
Ottoman internal and external governmental policy.

However,
both before and after the Young Turk Revolution, the implementation of
Ottoman policy towards Jewish immigration vacillated and was
inconsistent. Although Jewish immigrants brought with them their
intellectual skills, a positive attitude to modernity and a potential
inflow of capital which the Empire desperately needed to discharge its
foreign debt burden, most of the migrants, with the assistance of the
consuls, insisted on retaining their foreign citizenship, forcing the
Porte to relax its opposition to Jewish immigration and land purchases.

On
the other hand, Arab nationalists, encouraged by the Young Turk
Revolution, were strongly opposed to Jewish immigration and land
acquisition. When Jewish immigration increased noticeably, Arab
pressure forced the Ottoman Government to prohibit the entry of
additional migrants and to limit Jewish land purchases as they had done
previously in 1884 and on three subsequent occasions 1887-8, 1890-1 and
1892-3. Although foreign consular pressure forced the Ottomans to
remove these restrictions, the government vacillated in the wake of
Arab counter pressures to re-instate those restrictions.

Arab opposition stemmed from the apprehension of the urban notables that Jewish immigration and land purchases:

were likely to destroy the socio-economic balance reached
between the Arab elites on the one hand and the fellahin on the other
hand, who worked the land which produced the income upon which
the elites were reliant upon for their life style; and

would deprive not only the Arab elites of their power base
in the rural areas but also the fellah of his livelihood, encouraging
the latter to move to the towns if he was unable find agricultural
employment.
(see Ruth Kark, Changing Patterns of Land Ownership in Nineteenth Century Palestine:The European Influence, vol. 10 (1984) J. of Historical Geography 357)

A
major defect in the Ottoman implementation of its policy towards Jewish
immigration and land purchases was that no single Ottoman department of
state appears to have been made responsible for dealing with these
issues. The local authorities corresponded with at least four
central government departments whose co-ordination was weak such that
the instructions issued and re-issued to provincial governors
multiplied, modified and contradicted one another to the point where
the local authorities were faced with insoluble administrative
problems, a situation which created significant inconsistencies in the
implementation of government policy towards Jewish immigration and land
acquisition. For the Zionists, however, such inconsistencies could be
turned to their advantage.

Even
the Ottoman central government itself deviated from its own declared
policy. For example, in the north of Palestine, the Jewish Colonisation
Association (JCA), a non-Zionist organisation, whose resettlement
policy was not exclusively linked to Palestine, began to interest
itself in acquiring large tracts of land between 1896 -1904 from the
Suraq family.

Notwithstanding
the legislation prohibiting land sales to non-Ottoman Jews, the Council
of Ministers in Constantinople ruled that under the 1867 Land Code the
sale was permissible provided the purchaser gave an undertaking that it
would not install foreign Jews on it. Accordingly the Council granted
the JCA a concession. This transaction caused considerable alarm among
local Arab fellahin when surveyors came on to the site to measure it
for sale. Such was the scale of the opposition that the Central
Government abrogated the JCA Concession in 1901 but not before the JCA
had managed to acquire enough land for six colonies to be established
in northern Palestine between 1899-1904.

Implementation
of Ottoman policy at the regional and local levels towards Jewish
migration from Europe into Palestine was also inconsistent. In the
Sanjak of Acre for example, the administration was relatively benign
towards Jewish immigration and land purchases were negotiated,
completed and registered without much interference.

In
Jerusalem, matters were different. Apart from Reshad Pasha, who held
the Mutasariff between 1889-1890, the Jerusalem administrative
implementation of restrictions on Jewish settlement and land
acquisition and its registration were enforced more rigorously,
especially by Ali Ekrem Bey 1906- 1908. However, due to loopholes in
the Ottoman administrative control over visitors to the region, as
described below, neither he nor his successors were able to prevent
Jewish immigration, nor indeed indirect land acquisition through
nominees.

Apart
from the bureaucratic ‘professionalism’ and political
proclivity of the various Mutesarriflik and Sanjak governors,
government officials at the lower levels were also open to bribery and
corruption, facilitated by the corrupt practice of nepotism. In
exploiting their family connections, urban notables, especially in
Jerusalem and Nablus exercised influence over the local
administrative councils and although these councils were
‘elected’, in practice they were controlled by the
A’yans- who maintained hierarchical familial links within the
same hamullah.

ii. Tax Farming

Prior
to the 1840’s, the Ottoman central government practised tax
farming whereby the state auctioned the right of collection to private
individuals. In rural areas local sheikhs and village elders generally
acquired these rights. In the urban areas, the urban notables –
the a’yan elites - fulfilled this function.

This
led to abuse and corruption since in order to recover the price paid
for the right to tax and to gain a profit, the urban notables and rural
sheikhs squeezed as much as they were able from the local farmers on a
variety of pretexts, many of which were illegal, resulting in farmers
being placed in the tax collectors’ debt.

the
Ottomans attempted to change both the method of tax collection and
expand the tax base. They replaced the multitude of taxes imposed on a
large variety of goods and property and transactions by a relatively
simple set of taxes: a standard head tax was applied in urban areas; a
10% tax (usur) payable in kind was imposed on the agricultural yield
while head taxes placed on non-Muslims were divided into a number of
classes according to wealth and ability to pay. Tax collection by tax
farming was replaced by the appointment of government officials
(mubasirs), who in return for a fixed salary, were employed to collect
a predetermined amount of tax from each administrative area set by the
central treasury.

While
the system worked in urban areas, it failed in rural areas due to the
lack of competent professional personnel coupled with a lack of
knowledge of local conditions. In addition they had to contend with
opposition from the vested interests of local sheikhs and urban
notables who hitherto had been in the tax farming business.

In
1841, after central governmental employees’ failed to collect
taxes due on the agricultural yield directly from those in occupation
of the land, the Ottoman central administration was compelled to revert
to a modified system of tax farming. The Central Ottoman Treasury first
determined how much tax was to be collected from each sub-district. It
then passed the responsibility for its collection to Provincial
Governors who, together with their respective provincial advisory
councils (majlis al-idara) in turn resorted to and relied upon the
power of the local administrative councils within the Sanjak or
Mutesarriflik to sell the right to collect the tax by public auction.

The
successful bidder, generally a member of a local a’yan family,
paid the sum of the accepted bid to the central treasury, and was
allowed to collect as much tax as he was able to extract from the
village headmen and fellahin in kind or specie. In the process, the
a’yan families in the urban centres accumulated more power, while
both the local sheikh’s and the provincial governors lost power,
the latter often having to have recourse to ‘short term’
borrowing – sometimes from Jewish financial institutions - to
fulfil their immediate obligations to the Porte. In so doing the
Ottoman governors became vulnerable to external pressure to relax the
implementation of central government policy regarding Jewish migrants
and land acquisition.

Although
the sheiks retained their social standing in their communities, under
the administrative reforms, the Local Administrative Councils now took
effective control of the tax collection system.

As
shown earlier in section c (i) above, in Ottoman Palestine a relatively
small number of influential families in Jerusalem, Nablus and in the
other towns succeeded in maintaining control of the major municipal
councils throughout successive generations or were members of it while
their relatives found influential executive and clerical employment in
the many administrative offices which the system created. These
included tax commissions, land registries, courts, agricultural
committees, chambers of commerce.

Thus,
in addition to the inconsistency displayed by the central Ottoman
government towards Jewish immigration and land acquisition, the local
Ottoman authorities were very much left to themselves as to the manner
in which central government policy in relation to Jewish immigration
and land acquisition was to be implemented, leaving bribery and
corruption to play their part.

iii. Loopholes in Ottoman
Immigration Control and Land Registry Administration

Regardless
of the inefficiency or otherwise in the implementation of Ottoman
governmental policy, immigrants could enter Palestine indirectly
relatively easily by landing legally in Port Said or Constantinople and
make their way overland or landing directly at Jaffa or Haifa under a
variety of pretexts; pilgrimage being the most common. Rather than
returning home after the expiration of their three months visa, Jewish
migrants simply remained in Palestine.

Due
to uncertainty of the situation and fluidity in the local
implementation of central government policy, Jewish non-Ottoman
domiciliaries continued to acquire land indirectly as before, but
depended on finding (a) qualified Jewish middlemen possessing Ottoman
citizenship or even a local Arab to act - for a consideration- as a
nominal purchaser and (b) a lax or corrupt local Ottoman administrator,
dilatory in implementing the Ottoman legislation in respect of the
residential status of the émigrés, requests for
naturalisation and the registration of land transactions.

Such
matters lay in hands of the local officials who were employed by or
appointed to the local administrative councils which the urban
notables controlled. Even after successfully acquiring land, immigrants
still faced a very different cultural environment in developing the
land of Palestine from that previously experienced in Europe.

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In summary, this
Chapter has attempted to outline the nature and character of the
European Jewish immigrants participating in the Second Aliyah and their
interests which differed from those of their Sephardic co-religionists
and the context within which that Aliyah had to manoeuvre among the
Ottoman central and local governmental policy makers and
administrators.

Although these
interactions were to influence the future political direction of Jewish
and Arab relations, the human interaction which lies at the basis of
the Arab-Palestinian and Israeli-Jewish conflict finds its roots in the
their respective attitudes towards the acquisition of land and of the
Jewish exclusionary employment policies in respect of Arab labour.
These two major issues form the topics of Chapter IX following next.